His Pa long gone, mama frazzled and
busy pulling cockleburrs
that refused to make way for
white tufted King Cotton, her nights
keeping shotgun shack spotless, and smelling
of neck bones and soup beans, finally
Top Jimmy scripture lit by coal oil lamp.
Nobody cared that the bastard
son of a suitcase sundry salesman
wandered, shiftless, down back roads
hot, sun baked sand squishing between his toes,
dressed in worn overalls, shiny at the knees,
listening to mid-row field hand voices
rising even as backs bent. Old slave songs
so sad that he felt unalone.
When he was almost a man, angst
gave way to anger fueled by clear homemade
liquor, the cotton patches of Black Oak
could no longer contain him.
In Memphis, he held a mulatto girl dear,
but she laughed and called him boy.
He hit her and she fell shimmy limp.
So he fled back across the river,
stealing chickens all the way to Little Rock
and started capitol life as a stick up kid.
After a pinch and a nickel at the Walls,
he went right back to the life and shot a
man while robbing an Esso station.
When he pulled the pistol, the fellow
with the bow tie and greasy finger nails had smirked.
By the time he left the general population
of Tucker State Pen, moving into Two Barracks
with seven other men who shared
Death Row-- two rows of four cells
and of course Old Sparky,
he had hand picked an ugly green tattoo
that read Ma into his forearm
with a safety pin wrapped in thread.
He had also suffered whippings at the
hands of redneck guards with wide leather belts
and been sodomized by a sneering
man named Chick and two
flunkies who laughed every time
he cried out in pain and humiliation.
The nightmares of his life haunted him
each night like shadows, unrelenting.
His neighbor. a disembodied voice called
Pop, thick as sorghum molasses, helpful
and kind, told stories of the ghosts that
Old Sparky had let loose to wander in
eternal unrest. The raspy sounds of
shackles dragging or soul piercing screams
everyone on the row heard and knew
they were real.
Pop was set next to fry. Sleep was not easy.
Spectral tales told through low vents on graffito walls
next to toilet bowls, filled the time. Black Oaks'
own son sat Indian style on cold concrete floor and
shuddered-- no relief in sight, no rest for the wicked.
The unit, secured twenty-three hours a day,
echoed with successive slamming steel door sounds.
Sometimes the bare lights dimmed as if
the sizzle chair had just made love to another.
The bulls came and shaved Pops cotton top locks.
The oily voice in the vent was quiet that night.
Whether the glitch was an act of sadism
by gaurds or poltergiest, Pop was being tortured.
His normal pitch thick voice rising,
"Mo' juice, God Amighty, mo' juice,"
writhing in restraints like a spring slug on salted sidewalk,
"Sweet Baby Jesus, mo' juice,"
finally giving up the ghost.
Alone again with the ghosts of his past
with the smirking. bowtied Esso man,
with the high-yellow girl he would have loved,
with the absent father who'd sinned with his mother
with the sounds of clanging steel and the ghastly
smell that reminded him of his schoolmate falling,
hands out, into the Franklin stove years ago.
The gust of breeze that accompanied the
opening of his tumble locked steel door, cool
on the freshly shorn scalp, he rose and became
the dead man walking, shuffling between the
uniformed Angels of Death and strapping in,
alone again for the last switch thrown moment.
Alone.
